Microsoft Offered To Sell Its Bing Search Engine To Apple In 2018, But Quality Issues Meant That There Was No Way Google Could Be Competed With

An opportunity went up in smoke for Apple when Microsoft pitched it to acquire its Bing search engine in 2018, according to court documents from Google’s antitrust lawsuit. However, the Cupertino giant passed on the chance to have its own search engine, reportedly believing that Bing was riddled with search quality issues. Microsoft has also attempted to persuade Apple to make its search engine default in the Safari web browser, but the company has been met with a similar response.

Apple has been pitched six times by Microsoft over acquiring Bing, to no avail

In a court filing, Google stated that Microsoft tried selling Bing to Apple six times in 2009, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2020. Since there were quality issues with the search engine, Apple declined a boatload number of times.

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There were also talks where Microsoft attempted to establish a business relationship with Apple by setting up a joint venture and running Bing. Sadly, that deal did not materialize either. Microsoft likely believed that the potential partner would finally start showing adequate interest if Bing’s search result quality started improving, which the company claims that it did, but the talks did not bear fruit.

At this time, Bing has a measly 3 percent global market share, according to StatCounter, with Microsoft making $3.2 billion in revenue from search and news advertising in the fourth quarter of 2023. On the other hand, Google was raking in the dough, with its revenue reaching $48 billion in the same period. However, with Microsoft heavily invested in OpenAI and its chatbot ChatGPT, the integration of its own AI-powered chatbot and co-pilot may take away the market share from Google, but it goes without saying that it is going to be a tough road ahead.

Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, thought that Bing’s search quality and Microsoft’s